Durrow Abbey
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Durrow Abbey is a historic site located off the N52 some 5 miles from Tullamore, Ireland. To this day, the site remains a largely undisturbed early historic and medieval monastic site containing a complex of archaeological monuments, ecclesiastical and secular, visible and sub-surface. The extant monuments at the site include a large ecclesiastical enclosure, five Early Christian grave slabs, a fine mid-ninth century high cross, a fragment of a cross shaft, a complete cross-head (housed in the National Museum of Ireland) and cross base, a holy well and other extensive archaeological features. It also includes a motte built by Hugh de Lacy in the 1180s and it was here that he was killed in 1186.
From an architectural perspective, the site contains two interesting features: Durrow Abbey House — a building of significant quality dating to the 1920s when it was rebuilt — and the church, dating from the late eighteenth/early nineteenth century which itself is built on the footprint of at least one previous church, dating from medieval times. It is also suggested that the medieval church was itself built on the site of a former 12th century abbey church.
